20/Jan/2020 | Wander
Flight Status: Canceled
Says my airline app. All NYC airports are shut down due to a savage snowstorm roaring through the Northeast. It’s 5 AM in Austin, and I’m up to pack for what was supposed to be my criminally early flight back home.
I look around my almost pitch dark room. It’s one of those rare moments that I now realize I’m stranded with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Or am I? Surely I could shower, grab a hearty Texas breakfast, and catch up on emails and work. Or I could let my imagination soar, and make it an off-day to remember. I think I’ll go for the latter.
As I’m getting to the end of this revelation, a fresh memory randomly pops up in my head. While at one of Austin’s famous BBQ spots the previous day for a lunch meeting, I heard the country jukebox favorite ‘Luckenbach Texas’ by Waylon Jennings. It’s been covered by many country legends, but Waylon owned it. Every time I heard this song over the years I always wondered if Luckenbach actually existed, or is it some mythical town that Waylon dreamed up?
So I tap my phone screen, and to the blinding glare in the darkness, I type in Luckenbach. And behold, there it is, Luckenbach, Texas, pinging off the map like a beating heart in the heart of Texas. And as fate couldn’t have planned it better, it’s only 72 miles away. Being a road trip enthusiast, I didn’t mind that at all. And with that, as the first rays of sun start creeping into the room, I jump out of bed with a Texas battle cry – GIDDY UP!
As I do with every new town I visit, I like to learn the basics, but not too much. I like to leave some to my imagination, some room to be surprised & delighted. Some room to allow me to wander into town, park my car somewhere on Main Street, and start gliding aimlessly for a while. I like to stumble upon things and tell stories about them. I get the feeling Luckenbach will allow me to do just that….
So it’s 9 AM, and Google Maps tells me I’ve arrived, but all I see is one structure down this winding dirt road. Isn’t there some Main Street like other small towns? I park my car, start walking down the dirt road and now I’m standing in front of what looks like an oversized shack built in the 1800s with a barn-looking building to the left. And whaddya know? This is it. This is Luckenbach Texas, and his cool shack before me turns out to be the town’s Country Store, and Dive Bar, or should I say Saloon…all in one!
I walk up the porch past the vintage license plate-laden floors, I open the wooden door, I’m instantly transformed to a different era in time! Walking past cash register from the ’20s, signs covering the walls from early 1900s, headless ancient bust of a model wearing a dusty and faded bustier that shows the passage of countless decades, and then there are the charming roosters patrolling the store…it’s a creative take on store security.
I see the door on the opposite end of the country store leading into the Saloon. There’s something truly magical about those dusty western old-time saloons…the smell, the faded mirrors, the bartenders who always look the part first sight of vintage beer neon signs flickering in the distance.
It’s now 9:15 AM, yet I see a bartender standing behind the bar ready to serve. As I walk to the bar, I surprisingly hear voices chattering in…French? I tell myself these can’t be voices in my head, I haven’t even had my first beer yet! I look over my shoulder to see a group of what looks like French people with beers in hand chatting away. French tourists at a country saloon in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere?
“What can I get ya?” the bartender asks, I take a look at the beer selection and to my pleasant surprise, its mostly beers I never heard of, and they’re all proudly brewed in and around hill country near Luckenbach. So I begin to sample the new brews while chatting up the bartender who is local to the area and he starts filling me in on the rich history of the area and all the iconic country musicians that came through over the years. It turns out the barn-like building I saw on my way in was a dancehall and concert venue.
If there’s one common theme that strings together the country store, saloon, and dancehall, it’s the omnipresent face of Hondo Crouch, the Texas rancher who first saw the ‘Town Fore sale’ ad in the papers and bought Luckenbach for $30,000 in 1970. And even though he left this world in 1976, it’s clear he remains to be the beating heart of Luckenbach. From the moment you walk up to the main structure of the town, you’re greeted by a sculpture bust of Hondo adorned with his signature neck scarf, to all the photos, paintings, and tributes to Hondo dotting the walls inside, you can’t help but feel what Hondo means to Luckenbach. One photo that stayed with me was a black & white photo with caption ‘Gray-Haired Boy Still Dreaming – Age Sixty’
“Hang out for a while longer” Jimmy Lee Jones will be here in a bit with his coffee to play a morning set. Who the hell is Jimmy, I quietly ask? Oh, just a musician who toured will Willie Nelson and opened for the likes of Merle Haggard, Pat Green, and Ray Wylie Hubbard to name a few. And now I get to enjoy his tunes at the crack of morning with an ice-cold beer in hand…. that’s Texas livin’!
And sure enough, in walks Jimmy, a tall, burly man with long white hair and thick beard in jeans and denim shirt. Grabs the table by the only window, sets his coffee down, takes out his guitar, and the dusty, gritty sound of Outlaw Americana starts to ripple through the Saloon. My three new French friends (now in straw cowboy hats) and I are about to be treated to some down-home country music in its most natural habitat.
Jimmy starts sailing down the most epic of Country music memory lanes, covering the likes of Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, Hank Williams. But as he launches into the first verse of Buddy Holly’s ‘True Love Ways’ suddenly from behind me I hear the sweet sounds of a live Harmonica kicking in as if on cue. I turn around, and there is my bartender joining in the act with a dreamy Harmonica solo. Now, I must’ve been to a million bars in my lifetime, and I’ve never seen anything like this. The Harmonica solos kept coming in and out of songs. And as Jimmy starts the sorrowful first guitar licks of Vern Gosdin’s ‘Is It Raining At Your House’, I hear a second equally wistful guitar note, again, coming from behind the bar, I turn around to see there’s a second bartender with a guitar-playing back up to Jimmy. All of a sudden, it felt like an invisible band appearing one musician at a time…it was simply magical.